Sheila Birling Flashcards
Oh – how horrible! Was it an accident?
Her reaction to being told by the inspector that a young woman has died. It is a human reaction. She does not know who the person is or their social class or anything about them but her natural human reaction to hear of the death of a fellow human being is compassion and sadness. There is good in Sheila and others like her from the wealthy elite in society, if that goodness can be drawn out more and used to call for change in society it can make Britain a fairer place. This is what Priestley wants.
But these girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people.
One of the most important Sheila Birling quotes in the play.
Working class female employees like Eva Smith are not just objects to be utilized for making money and profits, not just ‘cheap labour’, they are human beings, people with all that entails in terms of feelings, emotions, a basic right to respect and dignity.
Priestley wants the capitalist elite to stop viewing their workers purely as tools to be used to make money but as people, human beings.
No, he’s giving us the rope – so that we’ll hang ourselves.
This is a very interesting quote. On a more surface level it means that the inspector will elicit things from the Birlings that will make them incriminate themselves in their role in the sad demise of Eva Smith, however on a deeper level it can be interpreted as the rich in society causing their own ultimate downfall be it in the form of a social revolution or some other type of upheaval. Remember Priestley was a socialist and though there are many types of socialists some believed or even yearned for a collapse of the existing social order, a revolution and the replacement of the current system with a new, fairer, more egalitarian system.
